Gardening Project

By: Nathaly Meza

Child: Julian
CD 04
Professor Castaneda
East Los Angeles California Community
College

My Gardening Project
Have you ever thought about planting in your classroom? At first you may think
planting in the classroom sounds messy and can get out of hand pretty fast but think
again. I have been given the opportunity to plant some seeds with a child and for it
became such a heart filling moment and memory I will treasure forever. Planting is not
only an activity for gardening but it is very much correlated with math, science, and
nutrition. Here are a couple reasons why planting is great learning experience for
children. When engaged in planting children are going to be exposed to many different
materials such as dirt, water, a flower pot and that may vary to what type of flower pot
the teacher would like to give to the children in fact that could also be another activity
where children can make their own flower pot. Other materials they are going to be
exposed to are shovels, and gloves only if you want the children to wear them during
the activity. Most important they will be exposed to seeds and what type of seeds
depends on the teacher or whoever is organizing the gardening activity. Of course
children should be able to use children size gardening tools so they can do as much as
possible without the teacher intervention as it is our goal to guide them not do the work
for them. Now this is where math and science come into play children will have to
exposed measuring cups to see how much dirt they will add to their plants and to
measure the amount of water. During this process children are also learning new
vocabulary and that is another discipline that can be put in the mix Language Arts. Once
the children begin to get hands on with the dirt the water and the seeds it becomes a
hands on science activity. They will learn the smell, texture, and the way it looks after all
ingredients are put together. Last but not least gardening goes very much together with

nutrition. During this activity the seeds we plant with the children can be edible plants or
plants that are going to grow into something used for a curtain food they eat on the daily
basis. As an educator we can definitely give the children the opportunity to plant a seed
for something edible such as beans, vegetable seeds, or flower seeds that way they can
learn how to measure the progress of their plants and that right there is math and
science. For my activity I choose two flowers neither is edible but I choose them
according to the season they would grow in. I choose a Hoary Alyssum, Gladiolus. They
are both spring flowers. The Hoary Alyssum flower is used as vegetative cover in mining
and municipal wastelands in the Ukraine and Germany. Unfortunately in some states
this flower might be considered a weed since it invades fields of alfafa. The other flower
I choose is the Gladiolus flower and this flower comprises of 260 species, 250 of which
are native to sub-Saharan Africa, mostly South Africa. About 10 species are native to
Eurasia. It is also not an edible plant but mostly admired for its beauty. While
conducting this activity I found myself even more interested than the child himself it was
also the first time I ever planted anything myself. It was very interesting to know I would
be contributing to earths beauty adding more flowers. I will confess that I really did not
know the exact order or process on how to plant seeds it was a learning experience for
both the child and I.